voice. a quick sad post.

[collegedropout]

Who: Sam Winchester
Broadcast: fleetwide
Action: Red Fish
When: after a sad shuffle :C


[Sam's very much subdued the day that Dean vanishes. If he reacts more viscerally to it, to knowing that this Dean was returning to his inevitable death at Sam and satan's own hands, nobody'd know it — he closes himself up in his room, keeps himself distant for a little while. It helps, because it also gets him away from those damned echoes that have begun to snowball. He's tried his best to ignore them, and with Dean suddenly gone... he doesn't trust himself to be anything but stressed at the sight. 

Anyway. Um. Best to move forward, right...? Get back into things. Working at the bar keeps his mind busy, as does helping with the garden, and there's also helping with the weird messages from the planet, and — dammit, Sam, get back into things. Fake it 'til you make it. This too shall pass, if you pretend hard enough that you're fine. So he breathes in deep, breathes out, and addresses the fleet.]

My brother, Dean, um. Dean Winchester's left the fleet. I wasn't sure how many people knew him, but...

[A pause.]

Anyone want to talk? I could use something to keep me occupied. Your choice of topic, just shoot. I can be a pretty good listener, too.

[Help me get out of this funk, huh.]

Comments

action.

[collegedropout]

[He ducks his head, sheepish.

Oh, right.]

Yeah, good point. I guess I never really thought about that; I'm so used to crappy circumstances I guess, so I never even... really batted an eye for the most part. Kind of screwed up now that you say it like that. [Sam truly lives a shit life in many scenarios.] You probably know what I mean, right? Why complain about a scrape when you've dealt with a broken leg?

hope* wow.

[mucked]

Bollocks. [ she purses her lips and watches his hesitation with a sharpish eye. ] I'll bemoan every last scrape. Someone has to.

[ it'a a lie, of course. designed to cover the fact that she behaves exactly as he expects. stick her through the gut with rebar and she'll still insist on rising to the occasion. but she is (perhaps) not prepared to see such bullheaded stupidity flourish in another person. ]

She deserves a thump for her idiocy.

[ but if you ask peggy, nearly everyone deserves a thump. ]

What an interesting accent Peggy

[collegedropout]

[... Oh. Well. He gives a nod, smiling softly.]

She did deserve it, you're right. It was a shitty thing to do.

[Strange, he only seems to just get the severity of the situation - if it had been anyone else getting essentially kidnapped and roomies, he'd be furious on their behalf. It had been terrible and a violation of sorts - Hell, she'd been talking about consummating their marriage. But after Lucifer... after decades being burned and ripped apart and mentally smashed and reformed... he stares distantly for a moment, frowning.]

... I guess I just expect it. Got used to it.

[He glances up.]

Can I be honest with you about something?

[mucked]

[ peggy gets a feel for the silences -- follows their beats, and uses one to lean forward and fill his glass. fill her own, too. the measures are generous. ]

Certainly -- if you want to be. [ the implication is clear. she doesn't expect honesty from him. she will not fault him for dodging, ducking, evading. but if he has something he wants to say (something he's ready to say) then she will be a patient ear for him. ]

[collegedropout]

[He licks his lips. Scoffs at himself, looking away, cup in hand.]

If it weren't for my brother... if it weren't for everything I had to fix back home...

I mean... it's just, if I had the choice, I don't know that I'd ever leave here.

[mucked]

[ she's about to pick up her cup. her fingers hesitate -- pad of her thumb on the porcelain. one by one, her victory red nails tap against the rim. funny how this revelation is so much easier to swallow than any about angels and gods and demons. but it's harder to react to, because she's nervous of betraying too much of the same. ]

Things have gotten so arse-backwards, have they? [ putting it mildly. peggy knocks back a mouthful, all at once, and tries not to scrutinize her own home-life by the same yardstick. ] Heaven knows, this place can be damned seductive. Surveillance state and all.

[collegedropout]

[He huffs.]

Yeah. Last I was home, I was in the middle of dying.

Probably, anyway.

It's always something there. Every time I leave and come back I just feel this big -- sigh of relief. Being. Able to relax is so friggin nice.

[He drinks from his horribly alcoholic tea. It's like discussing bad weather.

But then he closes his eyes, wincing, waving a hand.

It's cathartic, but it's undeserved.]

Sorry, I'm in a crap mood today; I'm just unloading on you like you're a therapist or something.

[mucked]

I've always been a good listener. [ her expression is tinged with a dampened wit. ] Therapists and spies have that in common, I think. The difference is in how we use what we hear.

[ that's not to say she's about to wield his confession like a knife; truly, she isn't. but she wants to absolve him of some of his guilt for telling her anything. peggy's had a long career in cultivating information: in a kindly fashion or otherwise. it isn't wholly his fault if he felt compelled to share. ]

But I will add that I know a bit about fatal wounds. Maybe not as much as you -- [ a tip of her cup ] -- but I have a very long and painful convalescence to look forward to when I return.

[ when. she isn't kind enough to herself to make it an if. ]

[collegedropout]

Oh? Trouble on a job?

['Mission' is a funny word to Sam, for his line of work.

Gig seems kind of silly now that he thinks about it, though. Like he's a musician, or something.]

[mucked]

[ she doesn't have the heart to tell him the 'job' in question is barely sanctioned. instead, peggy pushes her chair back and touches her palm against her abdomen. a little to the side, and low on her stomach. there's a scar under her tucked-in blouse, but she doesn't rush to share sight of it. alluding to its existence is enough. ]

Fell off a ledge and got myself skewered on a bit of rebar. Unpleasant.

[ lies! she let go on purpose. but peggy had been sparing herself a much worse fate. ]

[collegedropout]

[..... Peggy, none of Sam's jobs are sanctioned.

But anyway.

Full sympathy wince initiated.]

Crap. That's the worst, huh? I was shot there a few months ago.

[He puts a hand over LITERALLY THE SAME SPOT. Eyy. Rolls his eyes.]

What kind of werewolf uses a gun anyway?

[mucked]

[ pardon the quasi-blank stare as he says werewolf. moving on! ]

One who is thoroughly modern, I presume. [ look. sometimes you can't beat a good pistol. ]

[collegedropout]

[SIIIGH.]

Back in my day, werewolves used their claws.

[He's just being a teasing little - er, big troll.

But anyway.]

Why'd you go tumbling into rebar?

[mucked]

[ look, ordinarily she'd play this part off. give a little lip service to something about a warehouse chase or maybe go as far as to implicate roxxon. but sam has said enough unbelievable things, today. it's only fair that she should have her turn. ]

A famous starlet was trying to absorb me through her hands. Sort of. [ she describes it in a very purposefully obtuse manner. he's had her at such a disadvantage with his stories. she wants to capture a bit of that for herself. ]

[collegedropout]

Oh, wow.

[It's hard to shock or freak Sam out - and certainly it still applies - but there's a real twinkle of interest in his eyes at that.]

We had someone like that. Sort of. They absorbed people and became them, anyway.

...

Was that her way of saying she liked you, orrrr was it attempted murder?

[:| because people are friggin crazy]

[mucked]

The latter. Most vehemently. It isn't the first time she's 'attempted' it, either.

[ she talks about it with considerable carelessness now. but then again she's managed to speak with enough individuals from her future to know that zero matter does not, indeed, engulf the world. ]

[collegedropout]

Why did she have it out for you so badly?

[You must've really done something to piss her off.]

[mucked]

I stole a considerable measure of uranium before she could steal it first. [ well, that's not perfectly accurate. peggy frowns. ] Myself and a handful of colleagues, I should say.

[collegedropout]

... Right, right. Agent stuff.

What was she planning to do with something like that? In the bomb business, or something?

[mucked]

You're not far off the mark. Her husband helms a manufacturing company interested in fuel initiatives. But it seems she's the legitimate brains behind the operation -- and initiating a nuclear test explosion was one terrifying step in recreating a previous bit of phenomena.

[collegedropout]

Yikes. You really got your work cut out for you on this one, then.

[Sounds like a big deal.]

What sort of phenomena?

[mucked]

[ a puff of her cheeks. quite apart from the legitimate science of it all, the circumstances are not the easiest to explain. but she's come this far -- and sam's listened so well thus far. ]

A kind of...rift, I suppose. I've only seen film reel footage of what happened. [ and it had shaken her down to her marrow. ] Presumably to another dimension, as disquieting a thought as that might be. In the wake of the rift's destruction, all that was left was a glob of a highly potent -- and unsteady -- element. Awful stuff. We call it Zero Matter.

[ -- so! it seems peggy is no stranger to the weird and the strange, despite her indignant reaction to sam's stories. only her 'weird' and 'strange' have very firm scientific underpinnings. ]

[collegedropout]

[Disquieting for Peggy's world. For Sam, a Wednesday.

And he kind of knows how friggin' stupid that is. He bites his nail, thoughtful.]

Yikes again.

And your world is based in science primarily, right? So rituals won't exactly help you with that.

[mucked]

Only if said rituals involve breaking Whitney Frost's jaw. [ a bit of an attitude. a bit of a grumble. ] Not that it's at all safe to go near her. She's -- infected, I suppose, with some of the Zero Matter. I've no idea how she managed to survive absorbing some of it. But it's damned hungry -- whole people are consumed when she unleashes it upon them. It's almost as though she's learning to control it.

[ ... ] And she wants more.

[collegedropout]

Sounds like it's taking her over.

Are you able to send the Zero Matter back into the rift it'd came from? When my friend got overwhelmed with power from souls, we re-opened the door they came from and sent it all back in. I know it's different, but... maybe there's some sort of tech you guys can set up in your time.

[Don't mind him, this was just the plot to the begining of season seven.]